I think the smart thing to do is wait a few years if images don't sell you can decide then if they should be free. Flooding the market with free images is not a good idea. And no, "Exposure" is not going to get you many sales, if any at all. A small amount of free images does help.

I've worked on way too many projects for free over the years to know that EXPOSURE gains you nothing. Want sales? Then do GOOD work. Free images will not get sales for bad images.

Quoted Message: Do you check that box most of the time?I was first published in 1974 and thus was the start of my freelance career. I foolishly learned many things about "exposure" which is a fancy word for Being Dumb Enough To Work For Free.Giving a few images away for free is actually a good idea. Blindly checking the free box for all your rejections is foolish.

Posting bad rejected images is not going to attract buyers to your portfolio by the way, the other way around maybe...

I see no point in giving away free images. If you want exposure, than post them in your page, your blog, in the social media and link it to your portfolio, but dont give it away for free.If someone copy-paste it, he is doing a fellony and you can still sue him, so you can add exposure without giving nothing away for free.

You can set your account so that the option is disable rather than free when you have an image that hasn't sold in 3 years. That way if you miss an email - so easy to do - you don't have to worry about them becoming available for free on DT instead of perhaps selling somewhere else. I have one image that has earned me a total of $257 elsewhere that never sold on DT and thus is now disabled. And I have a few single images that have made me close $75-100 apiece on DT that have earned me far less elsewhere or that were rejected on other sites. "Good enough" for stock is very subjective.

I was actually going to let one of my old early attempts at a vector become available free after not selling when I got one of those emails, thinking I'd experiment to see if it would boost looks at my portfolio, then decided it would reflect badly on my portfolio, so I disabled it.

So, I can't tell you if allowing freebies help, though I'm inclined to think it generally is not the best idea - certainly not for all rejected images. Unless you're exclusive, in my experience, there's always a chance that you can license them elsewhere.

As Wisconsinart and Afagundes, have so eloquently suggested, if a required image is free, and its only 90% there, its going to be used, full stop. Especially in this age of so called austerity, that most of the civilised world now finds itself in. Buyers and picture researchers would find themselves disciplined, if they did anything else. The cost of us, living on this earth, will only ever go up, and will never be free, unfortunately. To invest time and money in giving away products for free, means your original product was never good enough in the first place!

Metz flash, 170-500 Sigma zoom. I still use a variety of 35mm Nikon f...

I understand that DT want to drive people to our images using free images, education or something. They can explain us better this marketing strategy...

I am one with some kind of anomaly, let me explain.My second most downloaded image (38 dl till now) is an origami. I have 25569 views on it, this is HUGE. The next one have only 5726 views. And now comes the big question mark: I have a free origami photo in my free section which was downloaded many many times. Maybe this free (and VERY BAD) origami pointed to my best selling origami?! I don't know.

I have only 6 images in my free section, for momment I am also reticent to give images for free.

This page lists all sales made for images donated after 4 years of no sales or images that fail review but meet some minimum requirements for the free section. These images are currently featured on Stockfreeimages.com."